Category Archives: Blog

Ernie in the Back Row – The Reality of Educational Reform

Posted on by
Reply

“Hey, Ernie! Yes, you in the back row of the faculty meeting where you have been sitting it seems like forever. Do you remember telling us ‘I’ve seen educational changes come and go. All I have to do is sit here and do nothing. I can teach the way I always have taught. It is all a tempest in a teapot and in the end nothing will have changed.’ Were you right? Have any of the reform mandates of the past thirty years done anything to change your teaching?”

In the 1980s and 90s Dr. Madeline Hunter was nationally active helping classroom teachers better understand the connections between learning theories and instructional design. For many teachers, her insights into how teaching using motivation, retention and reinforcement theories, to name just a few, significantly improved the ability of all children to learn and to repeat exceptional learning year after year. For other teachers, Dr. Hunter upset the applecart. Hardcore veteran teachers like Ernie had been using the same teaching techniques that their teachers had used in the 40s, 50s and 60s in their own teaching for years, if not decades,. Dr. Hunter recognized that educational reform was a process that some teachers would engage in gladly, others would learn over time, and some, not many, would be “Ernies.” Ernie was her name for the veteran teacher who was change oppositional. Ernie believed that his tried and true teaching, generally based upon lecture and rote learning, had worked over the ages and would work for him as long as he was in a classroom.

Needless to say, Ernie has seen an eyeful in the last thirty years. Just the intellectual reforms based upon learning and teaching theories have been amazing. Hunter’s Instructional Design. Outcome-Based Education. Understanding by Design. Framework for Teaching. Assessment FOR Learning. Whole Child Education. And, the list goes on. Interestingly, none of these reforms every threatened Ernie’s unwavering opposition to change. Why should they. Ernie observed that no teachers in the 80s and 90s were removed from their teaching positions due to their non-changeability.

Ernie probably sat up a little straighter in 2001 when No Child Left Behind was enacted as a federal plan for reforming public education. It was not the voice of President Bush expounding the urgency for the United States to repair its declining international status in educational assessments. It was not the infusion of federal dollars into Title programs that opened new teaching positions and purchased a flood of new teaching materials. And, it was not state governors extolling their legislatures to adopt NCLB regulations so that state budgets could be buffered with educational dollars. What caught Ernie’s attention was the doomsday clock of Adequate Yearly Progress. No matter the level of reading and math achievement of the students in Ernie’s school in 2001, by the spring of 2014 100% of all students were required to be proficient in state assessments or teachers would be fired and schools were going to close. It was the law.

For the first time in Ernie’s long memory, federal and state leadership said “What you are doing right now is not good enough. Do whatever it takes to meet the mandates of NCLB. If you can’t get the job done, we will fire you and find someone who can.” A mandate with the promise of enforcement was entirely new to Ernie, but as often as he was told “NCLB is the law and it is for real,” he still wondered what would happen if a great number of schools failed to make AYP. Would the Governor really fire all the teachers and take control of all those schools? So, Ernie waited and continued to teach as he always had taught and the academic achievements of his students continued to fall into the bottom of the “bell curve.” By 2007, 28% of all schools were failing to make AYP. The next year 38% of school failed to make AYP and USDE Secretary Duncan warned Congress that by 2011 82% of all schools would fail to make AYP if the rules of NCLB were not changed.

“Ah,” said Ernie. “Told you so.” State after state petitioned the USDE for relief from the AYP mandates of NCLB. “Ain’t nobody going to close schools or fire teachers now,” said Ernie, who had not changed his teaching practices one iota. He knew from his seat in the back of the faculty meetings that “change comes and change goes and, if you are smart, just sit back and do nothing. It will all blow over.”

But. Wait. NCLB did not entirely go away and the quid pro quo of the waivers caught Ernie’s attention. Academic standards were still in, but not the Common Core. School Report Cards replaced AYP and schools would be graded according to student performance in reading and math, attendance and graduation, and the quantitative gap in the academic achievements of mainstream white children and children of color and children with learning disadvantages. And, all teachers would be given a Teacher Effectiveness Index score based upon their use of effective teaching strategies and annual student achievement in reading in math. To top it off, all of this data would be publicly accessible on a statewide data base – the School Effectiveness Dashboard. Anyone in Ernie’s school district could dive into the data to find out how well Ernie’s students performed on the state assessments and how his school principal rated Ernie’s application of the Framework for Teaching.

“Really,” said Ernie. “I have been in my classroom since the 80s and after all the huffing and puffing I am still in my classroom. Let’s wait a little longer and see.”

Ernie was right once again. The state legislature botched the contracting for a statewide data system, renamed and adopted the Common Core academic standards saying “it would be nice if you taught these”, and dropped the evaluative features of the School Report Card system. The Report Card became an annual snapshot with no accountability features.

It may be that Ernie will retire this year. He has been in the classroom long enough to receive a full pension. Actually, it may be that Ernie has been retired for years but did not choose to leave his classroom. After all, his annual salary is greater than his annual pension and regardless of what he did in the classroom he still collected his paycheck. Next fall, we’ll look to the back row of the first faculty meeting of the year. Ernie may still be there. And, if not our Ernie, there still will be other Ernie’s slouched down low in their chair gazing out over a constantly reformed schoolscape that never really changes.

Building New Faculties

Posted on by
Reply

If a faculty of teachers is the heart of any school, then high quality instruction by caring teachers is the end game of faculty-building.

Faculty building is the recruitment, hiring, sustenance and bonding of an array of expert teachers into a synergistic group whose total professional work is a harmonious teaching environment that causes all children to learn.

Today we are in faculty crisis. Our school districts are bottoming out in their ability to attract and retain end game teachers. A generally recognized low compensation and low appreciation for teachers and increasing governmental abandonment of traditional public schools are taking a toll. As the career teachers of the Baby Boom generation retire, how will we fill their roles with new end game teachers? And, as nearly fifty percent of seated teachers leave the profession before the end of their fifth year, the capacity of school districts to build new faculties is more and more important.

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-do-teachers-quit/280699/

Certainly, we cannot anticipate a national or even state-led strategy to build our next school faculties. While the US Department of Ed champions the improvement of teaching across the nation, there is little political appetite for a new federally-led initiative. The banner of conservative politics safeguards public education to state and local control. Yet, states are poorly able today to lead a resurgence in faculty-building. Too many governors balance annual budgets by squeezing their allocations for education and too many state politicians have embraced school choice as a strategy for building their political base. Reinvesting by the statehouse in faculty building in public schools would contradict their current alliances. Hence, if a new faculty is to be generated, it will be up to local school districts one school at a time.

The recipe for building a new faculty begins with a school governance commitment to do what it takes to recruit, hire, sustain and bind a diverse set of teachers into a faculty. “What it takes” requires the dedication of money for salaries up front, money for salaries and benefits going forward, and money for professional support. It is ludicrous to believe that a new faculty can be generated without new investment. This is why. When undergraduates in colleges and universities consider their potential careers and do a side-by-side analysis of what life in each career would be like, in growing numbers they reject education. They look at the low entry level compensation and the low rate of salary growth. “A night manager’s starting salary at a fast food restaurant was 20% higher than mine.”

http://blog.octanner.com/appreciation-2/why-teachers-and-nurses-are-among-the-least-appreciated-jobs

Low starting salaries are followed by pay schedules of miniscule annual increases and, depending upon the state’s revenue collections, frequent years of frozen wages. As teachers consider the totality of a career, they check the status of teacher retirement funds and find too many state pension plans going bankrupt. Compensation is a problem for young teachers who have a chance to change career pathways before they lock in with a family and mortgage; especially talented teachers who will be successful in almost any other career they choose.

This is why there must be a new investment in faculty building. Entry level salaries must be raised and the progression from entry level to the district’s highest salary level compacted from 15+ years to six or seven. After six years, all teachers should have reached a comparative level of instructional quality, student-centered expertise and professional integrity. If they haven’t, they don’t belong in the new faculty.

Parallel to compensation, starting teachers consider the public perception of teaching and, as a national generalization, find teachers to be held in modest to low esteem. “Teachers are female, familiar, ubiquitous, and it is difficult to quantify their value.” What a terrible generalization, but generalizations are the bane of teachers.

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-teachers-not-respected-in-American-culture

The list of indistinguishing characteristics goes on. Seasonal work. Short-term relationships with students and most families. Too many reports in the press about the bad acts of teachers. A “do gooder’s” profession. Bad experiences with a teacher are all you hear from peers. And, teachers are too rule orienting and conforming. At the end of the day, these generalizations are fully inaccurate of the vast majority of teachers, but in our society singular stories get generalized and spread broadly. Consider the daily news and the ratio of good stories about teachers to bad stories. Bad stories make the news. And such generalizations beget a lack of appreciation for teachers.

Gladly, even with low compensation and low appreciation, there are bright and talented individuals who still want to be teachers. However, they are counted as individuals when the majority of their bright and talented classmates choose other career paths.

The second ingredient in faculty building is creating an environment of professional integrity. In a 2014 Gallup Poll, teachers ranked last among 12 professional groups in agreeing that their opinion at work matters.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0823-rizga-mission-high-teacher-retention-20150823-story.html

A teacher’s being told what to do did not start with No Child Left Behind and the standards movement, but these two phenomenon left all other reasons in the dust. NCLB ushered in a flood tide of “to do” mandates that have not yet left the house. Every teacher needed to submit their credentials to prove they were “high quality” and began to attend staff meeting after staff meeting to understand the meaning of Adequate Yearly Progress and AMOs .

http://eddataexpress.ed.gov/definitions.cfm

Schools everywhere charted the percentage of students attaining proficiency or better on statewide reading and math assessments and schools that did not make the mark quickly implemented new curricula and teaching models in order to make the mark on the subsequent year. Teachers were manipulatives just like paper and pencils. Data overwhelmed opinion.

Fast behind AYP came the need for more rigorous state academic standards and once again teacher input was not sought. State legislatures adopted appropriately rigorous academic standards in order to comply with federal fund-ladened mandates. And, once again teachers met in large rooms to be told what they would teach, how they would teach it, and how their job stability hinged on their students’ achievement.

http://www.corestandards.org/assets/WI_Adoption_CCS_2_June_2010_dpinr2010_75.pdf

The remedy will begin with a new era of professional integrity between school district leadership and the teaching faculty. A high level of professional integrity understands, accepts and benefits from a degree of tension. Every day is not one of sunshine and roses. Good arguments are healthy when they are undertaken by people who respect and trust each other. And, good arguments will improve organizational health and vitality. Arguments turn bad when they are not undertaken with respect and trust, but with animosity.

These are synonyms for making an argument: advance, allege, argue, assert, challenge, claim, confute, contend, contest, debate, disagree, dispute, elucidate, emphasize, enunciate, establish, explain, expostulate, express, oppose. They all are verbs that apply to an environment in which everyone cares about what their colleagues think and believe is best. These could be symptomatic of the professionalism that teachers want and deserve – the expectation that their well-argued opinions matter.

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/make+an+argument

The third ingredient for building a new faculty is sustenance. Sustaining a new faculty is the expectation/requirement that every teacher will engage in professional learning. This is not the district’s usual presentation of professional development necessary for organizational fidelity. The district has the need and obligation to inculcate its personnel with procedural matters. Certainly, school safety and security today require every teacher’s attention. This is organizational development not professional learning. Professional learning feeds a teacher’s personal need for advanced education. It is teacher-centric in that a teacher decides and engages in studies that advance their professional talent. “Idiocentricity” is what makes professional learning an essential part of life in a new faculty.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2016/03/best-deliverer-of-PD-may-be-teachers-but.html?intc=es

Some states have implemented personalized professional development strategies for teachers. Wisconsin’s PDP is an example, although it was implemented as a substitution for a faulted PD system of credits and units required for licensure renewal. Take away the relationship to license renewal and a PDP assumes the purpose of professional sustenance

http://dpi.wi.gov/tepdl/pdp

The last component of a new faculty is inspired principal leadership. An inspired principal is an effective instructional leader, a superb role model for children, an efficient administrative manager plus one. That “one” is the ability to bring out the “best and brightest” qualities of each and every member of the new faculty. Sometimes leading a large group of talented people is best served by underleading. Throw in examples of collegiality, participatory leadership, community, and “fun” and a principal begins to look inspired. When a faculty has an inspirational leader for a principal, often they find that appreciation, integrity, and sustenance become “just the way the new faculty is at our school.”

The Necessity of Sifting

Posted on by
Reply

I bake, so I sift. I live, so I sift. So, I borrow the saying, “sift happens.” And, to create better and more delicate bakery and to develop better and more impactful life decisions, the more one must sift. Bakers sift of necessity. For leaders, a decision that has not been sifted is an educated guess. I sift continuously and encourage every school leader to refine their sifting skills. If not, that other thing also happens.

http://www.craftsy.com/article/sift-happens

As a bread baker, I sift because flour and other dry goods settle, become compacted and clotted, and sometimes contain packaging debris I don’t want to taste in my end products. Sifting flour, for example, creates clarity. A sifted and weighed eight ounces equals a sifted and weighed eight ounces every time. I smile when asked to measure out a cup of “fill in the blank” and blindly add it to my bowl. A cup is not a cup and seldom is it exactly eight ounces regardless of how well you dip and use a straight edge to level at the rim. Sift to know what you have and when you know what you have, you can predict your results.

One also must sift continuously in the world of contemporary school leadership. Your weekly, even your daily, interactions present you with hundreds of bits of information, opportunities, dilemmas, and challenges. The topic does not matter, everything must be sifted. Every student problem, parent demand, professional development program, curricular program, learning assessment, and management decision contains ideas with and without merit. Unsifted decisions contain unspoken assumption, unseen costs, and unintended consequences. If you don’t sift well, how can you predict the effectiveness and the efficiency of your processes or the efficacy of your outcomes? So, how does one decide?

One sifts the school scene with the seine of their Big Picture or “this is the image of what total school success looks like.” The Big Picture is multi-dimensional, timeless and founded upon informed values and objectives. Achieving the Big Picture may not occur within a leader’s career, but the struggle to achieve the bigness and clarity of the picture is always conducted without favor or affection for any unsifted variables.

When baking, I have a clear picture of what will come out of the oven and how it will be presented for eating. Sifting the ingredients is my insurance that what I want is what I will get.

When leading a school, I have a clear picture of the ultimate educational outcomes that should be the result of our public school. Sifting the elements and workings of the many sub-organizations that constitute schooling – teaching, curricular and co-curricular programming, community support, child needs, and government mandates and finances – insures that each decision I make will continuously and consistently create the reality of a Big Picture quality education for all children.

Teaching Is Causing Learning; Get Rid Of Other Agendas

Posted on by
Reply

Tis a time for simplicity.

Amongst the piles of edu-data, reform proposals, governmental mandates, and clutchings for new ways to improve student learning outcomes, one simple explanation remains. Learning is a transaction between the learner and what is to be learned. This is an application of Occam’s Razor which tells us “Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

Strip away the nouveau and extraneous. Technology. Assessments. Instructional delivery. Parental choice and politics. Educational financing. After the onion is peeled, the remainder is a student confronting what is to be learned. Or, is it what is learned confronting a student? Yes, these are Occam’s two remaining variables. And, this is how we always should approach the proposition of improving educational outcomes. How can we magnetize that confrontation? How can we make the learner’s interest in the learning compelling? How can we make what is to be learned compelling for the learner? This is the first and most important place where “we”, the educational enterprise, enters the learning interaction.

The educator’s constant quandary is “How to illuminate, amplify, and activate, and perpetuate” the learner’s interaction with what is to be learned. It is eyes-on, hands-on, and minds-on work. It is personal and persistent. It begins every morning and expands across the day. Learner – teacher – learning. This is the most basic of educational propositions. How can I help you to learn?

Education actually is this simple. Sadly, the enterprise makes it much more difficult. Within our educational enterprise, there are propositions that Occam would say “strip it away.” And, there are propositions that Occam would tell us to selectively utilize.

Teachers are inundated with data, recordkeeping, and time-consuming chores related to data management. This has little to do with our basic proposition. Strip it away. The enterprise should be clear about what is to be learned and how it will be assessed. This is all a learner and teacher need to know.

The conversation about and implementation of new academic standards and new state assessments are exceptionally heavy in controversy. The emotionality of these issues distract both learners and teachers. Strip it away.

The politics of parent choice of school options is loud and irrelevant to daily learning. Strip it away from the schoolhouse.

Teachers are expected to be tech-users and social media communicators. Very 21st century and very chic. Considering the dynamic of the learning interaction – how to make it compelling – the use of technology and social media are very assistive. Technology can be the flashlight that illuminates what is to be learned and social media the conduit for teacher/learner talking. Great! Optimize it.

The more that we can do to clarify and personalize each student’s relationship with what is to be learned and the more we can strip away the impediments that obscure the teacher’s organization and management of teaching, the more likely we will be in causing student learning.

Be a Who Shouting “No Guns In School”

Posted on by
Reply

It is time for the Whos to bellow loudly. You remember the Whos of Dr. Seuss Horton Hears A Who fame. Really, if you cannot find your loudest voice on this issue, then you should be on a mote of dust blowing in the wind.

Guns in schools? Shout out your “No way, never!” Your legislators need to hear your Who-like voice.

In Wisconsin, Senate President Mary Lazich is offering a bill that will make it legal for persons with concealed gun permits to carry their weapons onto school grounds and into schools. Her unbelievable premise is that gun toters may go to school to deliver or pick up their children forgetting that it is illegal to carry guns onto school grounds and into schools. She does not “…want well-intentioned law-abiding people…” to be arrested because of their oversight.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/gop-bill-would-allow-guns-on-school-grounds-classroom-buildings-b99651260z1-365186111.html

Unbelievable! A person who is authorized for the concealed carry of weapons is obligated to know the laws related to carrying a gun on their person. If they do not, they should be liable under the law.

And further, bill co-sponsor Rep. Robert Brooks says “… he would feel terrible if there were a school shooting and parents and teachers told him afterward they didn’t have a chance to defend themselves because of state law.” Again, unbelievable. We read too often of law enforcement personnel empting their ammunition clips in a shootout and inadvertently hitting a bystander. In a school with hundreds of potential bystanders, even those in classrooms hiding or trying to flee, the potential for inadvertent victims in schools magnifies exponentially. I wonder how will Rep. Brooks “feel” at the funeral of a child or teacher inadvertently shot by a gun-toting parent.

“Now is the time…” Patrick Henry declared in speaking with revolutionary fervor. It is time now to respond to Lazich and Brooks and your area’s state assemblyman and senator telling them that school is not a place for guns. Make your voice heard loudly like the Whos of Whoville. Sadly, if this time slips away and there is no outcry against allowing concealed carry guns in our schools, it is just a matter of time before Rep. Brooks should feel terrible.